Ladies Love Country Boys
by TheXGrayXLady
Summary: They raised her up a lady, but there's one thing they couldn't avoid. Ladies love country boys. Songfic, college AU.


**Spady! This is finally finished! I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it! I had a bunch of ideas for this fic and due to the fact that my mail box has been flooded by college stuff and I'm spending my non-working weekends on college visits, I decided to go with a college AU. It's sort of a two shot, although one of them pretty much follows the other. Hope you like it!  
**

**Disclaimer: Just a humble Gray Lady, sitting in a chair. I'm not a millionaire. Will I own Xiaolin Showdown in the end? What's my final answer? Is it written there? Do I really care? I'm just here so I can quote Hugh Jackman...**

_**Ladies Love Country Boys**_

_**You know mamas and daddies want better for their daughters  
Hope theyll settle down with a doctor or a lawyer  
And their uptown, ball gown, hand-me-down royalty  
They never understand why their princess falls  
For some camouflage britches and a southern-boy-drawl**_

And thusly, the party lost her interest. If she wanted to listen to a bunch of boring people chat about art in the most boring way possible, she'd have gone home for the weekend. Normally, she loved art, but this was just too much. Her roommate had stuck her in a borrowed dress and dragged her down to a gallery opening because apparently her sort-of boyfriend was planning to do something horrible to one of the hipster douches displaying pseudo-intellectual photographs of skyscrapers, accompanied by out of context, deep sounding quotes by just obscure enough to make them sound smart authors and she wanted to stop him. Although that ended in the two of them making out in a coat cupboard and her being left with no way back to campus because Kimiko had the car keys and there was no way she was walking back in these shoes.

"Damn you Kimiko. Damn you and your damn boyfriend," she said, pacing outside the gallery. Even the chilly fall air turning her breath in to dragon smoke wasn't enough to alleviate her mood. She had to admit, she looked gorgeous, Kimiko had impeccable taste in fashion, and there were some parts of the gallery she wouldn't have minded looking at, but it was full of hipsters and the strappy gold sandal heels were horribly uncomfortable.

She wanted to sit on the brick ledge, but she figured that it would somehow ruin the satin origami cocktail dress she'd been forced into. Anything to stop standing on these spikes. She rubbed her arms for a bit of warmth. She hadn't thought to bring a coat. She'd been expecting heated car to heated building and then back to heated car, not heated car to hipster filled building to the cold sidewalk outside the hipster filled building.

"You okay miss?" a voice from behind her said. She whipped around to see a tall, blond young man standing in the doorway. He looked just as out of place as she felt, with his slightly muddy work boots rather than the usual ripped converse or ironic wingtips and loafers of the majority of guys at the gallery.

"Yeah," she said. "I'm fine. Just waiting for my ride. You?"

"Waiting on my roommate. He just up and disappeared a couple minutes ago," he said, loosening his royal blue tie. He had a nice voice, soft and gentle with a prominent Southern drawl.

"I know the feeling. Mine left me to fend off the hipsters, armed only with an unironic love of nineties pop," she said.

"That sounds like a real good time," he said. "Just outa curiosity, did ya see a guy with a Scooby Doo tie when ya were in there?"

"Nah. I wish I did though. He sounds legitimately cool."

"He's not. He thinks he is, but he's not," he said, sounding just a bit peeved. "If ya hear anybody in there shouting about glitter, it means I wasn't able to complete my mission."

"Eh. I'm sure the CIA makes exceptions for Hipster related offenses," she said. Actually, that whole glitter thing rang a bell. "Your roommate wouldn't happen to be named Raimundo would he?"

"Yeah why?"

"You're not gonna find him any time soon."

"Why?"

"Because reasons. That's why," she said. "My roomie dragged me down here to stop him too."

"Oh," he said, seemingly putting two and two together. "So you're Kim's roommate then? Ella right?"

"Emma," she corrected, holding out her hand for a handshake.

"I'm Clay," he said, returning the gesture. "Nice to finally meet ya."

"Ooh. You've heard the horror stories then?"

"Just the one about you calling your poli-sci professor's grad student your Fairy Godmother," he said.

"In my defense, she called me either Ella or Timmy for the first couple weeks of class and went off on a rant the other day about how glass is a terrible building material for shoes," she said. He gave a slight laugh. "You go to Xiaolin U right?"

"Yeah, pre-vet" he said. "You?"

"Well, I went in pre-law, but I'd rather do something with art," she said. While she liked to argue, law certainly wasn't her idea.

"Ya like anythin' in there?" he said, tipping his head towards the gallery.

"Well, there were a couple paintings, but I think I'm too mainstream for most of it," she said.

"I hear ya. Don't get me wrong, normally I love art, but I'm seein' some stuff there and I'm thinkin' that my little cousin could do that," he said.

"I'm not even going to comment," she said, rolling her eyes in frustration. She'd finally found someone who understood her frustration with splatter painting. "So..." she needed something to continue the conversation. She sort of liked Clay and she wasn't sure when Kim would be ready to leave. "Kinda chilly isn't it?" She instantly mentally kicked herself. Here she was talking to a cute, smart guy and she had to go and be all witty with talking about the weather.

"Yep. That it is," he said. "I think I'm gonna head back in a bit. If Kim's here, Rai's probably not gonna want to leave for a while and I really don't wanna get back after curfew."

"Right. Stupid freshmen curfew," she muttered. "Hey if we're both going back to campus, my RA already thinks I'm completely bats, ya mind if I get a ride?"

"Not a problem," he replied.

"Awesome. I'll send Kim a text telling her that she's driving Rai back," she said.

**X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X**

And thus, she'd spotted her prey. She'd cornered him hunched over a library table, a stack of books off to one side. This was going to be, to quote Raimundo and Clay's other roomie Omie, easy as cake. She crept forwards and just when she was close enough, she lunged forwards. She gently covered his eyes with her hands and whispered, "Guess who?" in his ear.

"Emma, I don't have time for this," he muttered.

"Come on, you're no fun," she said, putting her head atop his and staring down her nose at his bio work. "How's the assignment coming?"

"It's comin' along just fine," he said. She couldn't help but note how odd his voice sounded. And not in the usual, "I'm from Texas. Deal with it," sort of way.

"Yeah, well you can finish it later. Concert, quad, twenty minutes," she said, reaching for his notes and noting that the hoodies from the campus store were absurdly soft.

"I can finish it now," he said, sliding the papers to the other side of the table. She mentally cursed her short person arms.

"Come on. It's going to be fun. It's a Beatles cover band and someone has to help me chaperone Rai and Kim because Omi's too naive and I'm sure as hell not responsible enough," she said.

"You guys go and have fun on your own," he said. That's when it hit her. The attempted lack of an accent.

"The hell is wrong with your voice?" she asked, taking the seat next to him.

"Nothing," he said.

"You sound like me when I'm trying to act British, only generic American rather than not quite British," she said.

"Em, I'm fine," he said.

"No, you're not." Now that she was actually looking, she noted other little differences. Gone were the flannel shirt and cowboy boots and in their stead were a campus hoodie and sneakers. "In fact, you sound like a talking toolbag."

"That's not even a word."

"Says Captain Generic Voice, Collegiate Tool," she said. "Seriously, what's wrong?"

"Nothin'. Just leave me alone. I've got a bio assignment to finish and the class already thinks I'm a moron," he said, slipping back into his normal accent for just a moment.

"Wait. What?" she said, a bit of a barking, incredulous laugh creeping into her voice.

"I'm tired of people thinking I'm a dumb hick so I decided it was time to make some changes," he said, the false accent returning.

"Well screw them," she said. " You're one of the smartest people I know. Don't change to prove anything to people who don't matter."

"I can't just ignore it though," he said.

"Well, you don't need to become one of them. Those sneakers don't look right and while that hoodie is amazingly soft, it does not smell as good as freshly washed flannel," she said. She stood and used her only advantage in this situation, surprise, to haul all six feet, four inches of him to his feet and snag his papers. "Now, you're going to go back to your dorm, change into normal clothes, and join us on the quad for a night of fun, friends, and the Fab Four. _Tuig_?"

"Cowboy understand," he said, sounding just a little shell shocked at her outburst.

"And just for the record," she said, kneeling on the chair so she could actually reach his head. "Your accent is adorable." And with that, she planted a kiss on his cheek and walked off, leaving him to wonder what the heck just happened and why he was smiling like an idiot.

**And what do you think? I tried, I did try, I just don't think I did very well. Any questions, comments, worries, thoughts of any kind, please direct to the review button because I love to get feed back. Any sort of response makes me deliriously happy and I need to be deliriously happy right now. **


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